Stanley Carlson-Thies

How can a funder, a foundation, support diversity and promote inclusiveness in its funding strategy? Some community foundations are requiring their grantees to agree to abide by a sweeping inclusion requirement in their services and their employment policy, but it is a requirement that actually marginalizes many citizens and organizations in the communities these foundations aim to enliven.

Community foundations, a relatively new kind of philanthropic organization, gather donations from a community and then make grants to promote the community’s wellbeing. They also administer donor-advised funds, helping wealthier donors administer the funds they want to give to good causes in the local area. A community foundation aims to encourage giving and to deploy wealth for the good of the geographical place where it is located.

Geographical places—cities, towns, metropolitan regions—alas, are always, to one degree or another, places of uneven distribution of resources and opportunities, of racial disparities and tensions, of religious diversity and friction. It makes great sense that a community foundation would aim to overcome such problems in its funding decisions. And to help it understand the community and deal fairly with all of its strengthens and weaknesses, its diversity and differences, it makes great sense that a community foundation would adopt a deliberate strategy of inclusion for its staff and operations and partnerships, countering conscious and unconscious biases in its recruitment and selection of new staff, working specifically to engage all parts of the community as it assesses community needs, and so on.

But should it require all of its grantees to be similarly inclusive in staff and services? Here’s the “inclusion statement” that one community foundation requires its grantees to affirm (this is from the Kalamazoo [Michigan] Community Foundation, but it is just one example of a spreading practice):

• No person is excluded from agency services.
• Wherever practical, all people will be considered in employment or volunteer participation, regardless of ethnicity, race, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, economic circumstances, physical and/or mental abilities/characteristics, philosophy/religion, or any other discriminatory reason.
• The organization is continuing to intentionally increase inclusive practices.

This how the foundation explains the intent of the requirement: “The greater Kalamazoo area draws its spirit, vitality and character from the increasingly diverse mix of people who live and work in our community. The Kalamazoo Community Foundation recognizes that the future strength of our organization and this community rests firmly on its commitment to value, respect and embrace the richness of a diverse citizenry.

“The Community Foundation wants to do its part to ensure that no person is excluded from services, employment or volunteer participation because of ethnicity, race, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, economic circumstance, physical and/or mental abilities/characteristics, philosophy/religion, or any other discriminatory reason.”

The intention is good, but notice the limited idea of diversity and inclusion. The foundation names only diversity among individuals, leaving out the diversity of groups and organizations, including different religious communities with their varying ethical and religious commitments, and nonprofits and companies that are inspired and shaped by varied faiths and philosophies. And the foundation claims that those varied faiths and philosophies (“philosophy/religion”in the inclusion statement) are simply aspects of wrongful, exclusionary, discrimination.

But this is a misconception about what a geographical community is and what diversity entails. Geographical communities are communities of communities, networks of diverse, sometimes even opposing, subcultures of citizens committed to one or another religious or philosophical view, collections of diverse organizations that have differing views of how best to serve some part of the diverse community and differing views of who from the diverse community is a good fit for the organization’s ethos and commitments.

By requiring every grantee to hire staff without regard to religion or philosophy—by labeling these basic dimensions of commitment and life orientation to be mere excuses for discrimination and exclusion—this community foundation is pushing out of the community it supports many of the organizations—faith-based organizations—that play vital and irreplaceable roles in serving the common good. It dishonors their conceptions of the good, it refuses to support their way, their “uncommon”way of serving the diverse common good of the community.

Community foundations are not the only significant philanthropies in US communities, and, as private entities, they are legally free to devise just about whichever giving criteria they want. But it belies the very name and good intentions of a community foundation when it creates a grant requirement that renders illegitimate and unacceptable the effort of various institutions to select for their staffs only those applicants who are compatible on philosophical or religious grounds. As if PETA is wrong to employ only animal-lovers, a Jewish organization is suspect if only Jews can be in its top ranks, and a Montessori school should be shamed for insisting that its teachers should be Montessorians. This kind of inclusion requirement is anti-diversity and selective.

The Kalamazoo Community Foundation, in fact, realizes that not every organization must serve every person: it acknowledges that an organization that serves a “specifically defined population”should not be considered “non-inclusive or discriminatory.” Just so: a program to help at-risk teens is not wrong to focus on at-risk teens instead of grandmothers, imams, or Eagle Scouts. It is a contribution to the (diverse) community for one organization to take care of Baptist toddlers while another one cares for Jewish toddlers.

Varied organizations serving a diverse community: that’s a positive way to put this insight. And another one should go with it: it is not wrong, and indeed can be essential, for organizations to be choosey—“discriminatory”—in deciding who to hire. A Republican Senator’s office would not function well if Democratic applicants could not be screened out. Bernie Sanders’presidential campaign should be given free reign not to employ any Trump supporters. And a Muslim organization should be able to hire only those it considers to be faithful Muslims, without being penalized by a community foundation for engaging in this legal and necessary practice.

Faith-based organizations and secular organizations with a philosophically distinct mission should engage their local community foundations, asking to be acknowledged as legitimate, even vital, members of the diverse local community, not excluded because they do not try to be all things to all people. Donors should ask their local community foundations to be inclusive by not excluding distinctive organizations with selective employment policies.

A diverse community rests on varied organizations; varied organizations can only flourish if they are free to be, well, varied.